Weekend Edition: September 25, 2015

It's worth noting that the Pope went to see the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns being pressed to provide contraception to, well, a group of old nuns.

Pope Francis on Wednesday made an unscheduled stop to a convent of nuns to show his support for their lawsuit against U.S. President Barack Obama’s healthcare law.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the visit to the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor for what he called a “brief but symbolic visit.”

Last August, a federal appeals court in Denver put on hold its ruling that the order of Roman Catholic nuns must comply with a contraception mandate in the law, giving the group time to petition the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nuns had sued under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act over the birth control provision of the 2010 Affordable Health Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.

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Each quarterly issue contains 10-12 articles by mission and church leaders and experienced cross-cultural workers around the world. EMQ is comprised primarily of non-solicited 2,000-3,000-word articles polished through a lengthy editorial process designed to ensure we publish only top-quality articles which will equip and encourage Christian workers around the world. EMQ’s first-rights policy also ensures that the content readers find in EMQ will not be found elsewhere. EMQ is published by the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College and is available both in print and online.

Of course it does. Your church had a beginning, and the movement that birthed your church has a history also.

But does your church’s past have any meaning or significance in the life of your congregation?

The answer to that question does not come as easily.

LIVING IN THE PAST VS. LIVING OUT OF THE PAST

In a previous post, I wrote about the need for churches to live in 3-fold time, with proper attention devoted to the past events that constitute identity, the present tasks before us today, and the future hope that strengthens our witness.

Today, I want to focus on the first aspect — how a church can be rooted in the saving actions God has performed in the past and the sustaining grace He has shown to His people throughout history.

In his book, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, Albert Speer discusses something he witnessed as Adolf Hitler’s popularity began to escalate.

“Hitler himself put up no visible resistance to the evolution of a court.”

Powerful people, whether they intend for it to happen or not, find that “a court” of sorts rises up around them. Suddenly people want to serve them. People want to run errands for them. Something happens and people look to see how that person is responding, and they respond accordingly. It happens to powerful people, popular people, famous people. And it’s not the powerful, popular, famous person’s fault. It’s simply human nature.

Just before a friend of ours became CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he asked a predecessor what to expect. The former CEO responded, “Your jokes are about to get a lot funnier.” It was his way of saying that a court would soon be evolving around this leader.

If you’ve been paying attention to the world outside of the United States at all the last few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly been heartbroken by images like these of the men, women, and children fleeing the destitution of Syrian refugee camps and risking their lives to find one worth living. If you know nothing about the Syrian refugee crisis, I encourage you to learn about it quickly and easily here.

I have been obviously saddened over this, but when it comes to horrific tragedies like this that are taking place half way around the world, I often feel useless because I can’t just pack up and rescue these refugees myself. If you feel like I do, fear not, there are plenty of ways you can get involved and help Syrian refugees. Here are just three:

1. Pray

I know, it seems trite and patronizing, but it’s really not. Prayer sometimes seems like an easy way out of doing anything, but that’s only when we doubt its power. When you think about the power of prayer and the ways in which God works through the petitions of his people, prayer hardly seems like a cop out.

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